List

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The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

Joanna Cannon

“I loved this book. It's one of those books that you just want to give to everybody.” —Nancy Pearl on NPR’s Morning Edition

“An astute, engaging debut” (Publishers Weekly), The Trouble with Goats and Sheep is a quirky and utterly charming tale of a community in need of reconciliation and two girls learning what it means to belong.

England, 1976. Mrs. Creasy is missing and the Avenue is alive with whispers. The neighbors blame her sudden disappearance on the heat wave, but ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly aren’t convinced, and decide to take matters into their own hands.

Spunky, spirited Grace and quiet, thoughtful Tilly go door to door in search of clues. The cul-de-sac starts to give up its secrets, and the amateur detectives uncover more than they ever imagined. A complicated history of deception begins to emerge—everyone on the Avenue has something to hide.

During that sweltering summer, the lives of all the neighbors begin to unravel. The girls come to realize that the lies told to conceal what happened one fateful day about a decade ago are the same ones Mrs. Creasy was starting to peel back just before she disappeared...

“A thoughtful tale of loyalty and friendship, family dynamics and human nature” (Kirkus Reviews), this glorious debut is part coming-of-age story, part mystery. The Trouble with Goats and Sheep radiates an unmistakable warmth and intelligence and is “rife with tiny extraordinaries” (The New York Times Book Review). “Joanna Cannon is an author to watch” (Booklist, starred review).

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The Awakening

Nora Roberts

#1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts begins a new trilogy of adventure, romance, and magick in The Awakening.

In the realm of Talamh, a teenage warrior named Keegan emerges from a lake holding a sword—representing both power and the terrifying responsibility to protect the Fey. In another realm known as Philadelphia, a young woman has just discovered she possesses a treasure of her own...

When Breen Kelly was a girl, her father would tell her stories of magical places. Now she’s an anxious twentysomething mired in student debt and working a job she hates. But one day she stumbles upon a shocking discovery: her mother has been hiding an investment account in her name. It has been funded by her long-lost father—and it’s worth nearly four million dollars.

This newfound fortune would be life-changing for anyone. But little does Breen know that when she uses some of the money to journey to Ireland, it will unlock mysteries she couldn’t have imagined. Here, she will begin to understand why she kept seeing that silver-haired, elusive man, why she imagined his voice in her head saying Come home, Breen Siobhan. It’s time you came home. Why she dreamed of dragons. And where her true destiny lies—through a portal in Galway that takes her to a land of faeries and mermaids, to a man named Keegan, and to the courage in her own heart that will guide her through a powerful, dangerous destiny...

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Armada

Ernest Cline

From the author of Ready Player One, a rollicking alien invasion thriller that embraces and subverts science-fiction conventions as only Ernest Cline can.

Zack Lightman has never much cared for reality. He vastly prefers the countless science-fiction movies, books, and videogames he's spent his life consuming. And too often, he catches himself wishing that some fantastic, impossible, world-altering event could arrive to whisk him off on a grand spacefaring adventure.

So when he sees the flying saucer, he's sure his years of escapism have finally tipped over into madness.

Especially because the alien ship he's staring at is straight out of his favorite videogame, a flight simulator callled Armada--in which gamers just happen to be protecting Earth from alien invaders.

As impossible as it seems, what Zack's seeing is all too real. And it's just the first in a blur of revlations that will force him to question everything he thought he knew about Earth's history, its future, even his own life--and to play the hero for real, with humanity's life in the balance.

But even through the terror and exhilaration, he can't help thinking: Doesn't something about this scenario feel a little bit like . . . well . . . fiction?

At once reinventing and paying homage to science-fiction classics, Armada is a rollicking, surprising thriller, a coming-of-age adventure, and an alien invasion tale like nothing you've ever read before.

Praise for Armada

"A thrilling coming-of-age story."--Entertainment Weekly

"Nerd-gasmic . . . another science fiction tale with a Comic-Con's worth of pop-culture shout-outs."--Rolling Stone

"An amazing novel that] proves Cline has the ability to blend popular culture with exciting stories that appeal to everyone."--Associated Press

"Mixes Star Wars, The Last Starfighter, Independence Day and a really gnarly round of Space Invaders into a tasty sci-fi stew."--USA Today

"A fantastic second novel . . . fans of Ready Player One, it is time to rejoice."--Huffington Post

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The Zealot and the Emancipator

H. W. Brands

Gifted storyteller and bestselling historian H. W. Brands narrates the epic struggle over slavery as embodied by John Brown and Abraham Lincoln—two men moved to radically different acts to confront our nation’s gravest sin.
 
John Brown was a charismatic and deeply religious man who heard the God of the Old Testament speaking to him, telling him to destroy slavery by any means. When Congress opened Kansas territory to slavery in 1854, Brown raised a band of followers to wage war. His men tore pro-slavery settlers from their homes and hacked them to death with broadswords. Three years later, Brown and his men assaulted the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to arm slaves with weapons for a race war that would cleanse the nation of slavery.

Brown’s violence pointed ambitious Illinois lawyer and former officeholder Abraham Lincoln toward a different solution to slavery: politics. Lincoln spoke cautiously and dreamed big, plotting his path back to Washington and perhaps to the White House. Yet his caution could not protect him from the vortex of violence Brown had set in motion. After Brown’s arrest, his righteous dignity on the way to the gallows led many in the North to see him as a martyr to liberty. Southerners responded with anger and horror to a terrorist being made into a saint. Lincoln shrewdly threaded the needle between the opposing voices of the fractured nation and won election as president. But the time for moderation had passed, and Lincoln’s fervent belief that democracy could resolve its moral crises peacefully faced its ultimate test.

The Zealot and the Emancipator is acclaimed historian H. W. Brands’s thrilling and page-turning account of how two American giants shaped the war for freedom.

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Begin Again

Eddie S. Glaude

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the civil rights movement to force America to confront its lies about race. In our own moment, when that confrontation feels more urgently needed than ever, what can we learn from his struggle?

"In the midst of an ugly Trump regime and a beautiful Baldwin revival, Eddie Glaude has plunged to the profound depths and sublime heights of Baldwin's prophetic challenge to our present-day crisis."--Cornel West

We live, according to Eddie S. Glaude Jr., in a moment when the struggles of Black Lives Matter and the attempt to achieve a new America have been challenged by the election of Donald Trump, a president whose victory represents yet another failure of America to face the lies it tells itself about race. From Charlottesville to the policies of child separation at the border, his administration turned its back on the promise of Obama's presidency and refused to embrace a vision of the country shorn of the insidious belief that white people matter more than others.

We have been here before: For James Baldwin, these after times came in the wake of the civil rights movement, when a similar attempt to compel a national confrontation with the truth was answered with the murders of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In these years, spanning from the publication of The Fire Next Time in 1963 to that of No Name in the Street in 1972, Baldwin transformed into a more overtly political writer, a change that came at great professional and personal cost. But from that journey, Baldwin emerged with a sense of renewed purpose about the necessity of pushing forward in the face of disillusionment and despair.

In the story of Baldwin's crucible, Glaude suggests, we can find hope and guidance through our own after times, this Trumpian era of shattered promises and white retrenchment. Mixing biography--drawn partially from newly uncovered interviews--with history, memoir, and trenchant analysis of our current moment, Begin Again is Glaude's endeavor, following Baldwin, to bear witness to the difficult truth of race in America today. It is at once a searing exploration that lays bare the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we all must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America.

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Agent Sonya

Ben Macintyre

The “master storyteller” (San Francisco Chronicle) behind the New York Times bestseller The Spy and the Traitor uncovers the true story behind the Cold War’s most intrepid female spy.

In 1942, in a quiet village in the leafy English Cotswolds, a thin, elegant woman lived in a small cottage with her three children and her husband, who worked as a machinist nearby. Ursula Burton was friendly but reserved, and spoke English with a slight foreign accent. By all accounts, she seemed to be living a simple, unassuming life. Her neighbors in the village knew little about her.

They didn’t know that she was a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer. They didn’t know that her husband was also a spy, or that she was running powerful agents across Europe. Behind the facade of her picturesque life, Burton was a dedicated Communist, a Soviet colonel, and a veteran agent, gathering the scientific secrets that would enable the Soviet Union to build the bomb.

This true-life spy story is a masterpiece about the woman code-named “Sonya.” Over the course of her career, she was hunted by the Chinese, the Japanese, the Nazis, MI5, MI6, and the FBI—and she evaded them all. Her story reflects the great ideological clash of the twentieth century—between Communism, Fascism, and Western democracy—and casts new light on the spy battles and shifting allegiances of our own times.

With unparalleled access to Sonya’s diaries and correspondence and never-before-seen information on her clandestine activities, Ben Macintyre has conjured a page-turning history of a legendary secret agent, a woman who influenced the course of the Cold War and helped plunge the world into a decades-long standoff between nuclear superpowers.

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When You're Not OK

Jill Stark

A gorgeously illustrated, warm and practical book of tips and wisdom to guide you through tough times.

This is a self-care manual for the days when you feel alone--the days when you worry that you're too weird or broken or unfixable to be normal. With compassion, humor, and honesty, Jill offers signposts to help you find the path back to yourself.

Whether you're having a bad day, or a run of bad days that seems never-ending, When You're Not OK is an emotional first-aid kit for your body, mind, and soul, written by someone who's been there too.

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This Just Speaks to Me

Hoda Kotb

An instant New York Times bestseller!

In this all-new collection of beloved quotes, This Just Speaks to Me, #1 New York Times bestselling author Hoda Kotb offers inspiration, wisdom, and hope 365 days a year.


When her first collection of quotes, I Really Needed This Today, was published in 2019, Hoda never imagined how deeply her favorite words, stories, and memories would resonate with readers. People across the country were connected not only by the book's positive message, but through their generosity in sharing it with friends and family who needed a daily burst of inspiration. Hoda was truly touched by fans who shared "their quote" with her, the one that most moved them or someone they love.

Now, to follow that remarkable experience, Hoda is back, with 365 new quotes and stories to share with her beloved readers. In This Just Speaks to Me, she writes about the people and moments that have enriched her life, discussing everything from motherhood and friendship to love and loss. The book also celebrates the countless acts of kindness that unfolded during these uniquely challenging times. Told with the same warmth, humor, and generosity that infused I Really Needed This Today, This Just Speaks to Me promises to be the next great companion book, each day elevated by Hoda's sparkle at a time when we may need it the most.

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Magic: A History

Chris Gosden

An Oxford professor of archaeology explores the unique history of magic—the oldest and most neglected strand of human behavior and its resurgence today

Three great strands of belief run through human history: Religion is the relationship with one god or many gods, masters of our lives and destinies. Science distances us from the world, turning us into observers and collectors of knowledge. And magic is direct human participation in the universe: we have influence on the world around us, and the world has influence on us.

Over the last few centuries, magic has developed a bad reputation—thanks to the unsavory tactics of shady practitioners, and to a successful propaganda campaign on the part of religion and science, which denigrated magic as backward, irrational, and "primitive." In Magic, however, the Oxford professor of archaeology Chris Gosden restores magic to its essential place in the history of the world—revealing it to be an enduring element of human behavior that plays an important role for individuals and cultures. From the curses and charms of ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish magic, to the shamanistic traditions of Eurasia, indigenous America, and Africa; from the alchemy of the Renaissance to the condemnation of magic in the colonial period and the mysteries of modern quantum physics—Gosden's startling, fun, and colorful history supplies a missing chapter of the story of our civilization.

Drawing on decades of research around the world—touching on the first known horoscope, a statue ordered into exile, and the mystical power of tattoos—Gosden shows what magic can offer us today, and how we might use it to rethink our relationship with the world. Magic is an original, singular, and sweeping work of scholarship, and its revelations will leave a spell on the reader.

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Good Guys

David G. Smith

The key to advancing gender equality? Men.

Women are at a disadvantage. At home, they often face an unequal division of household chores and childcare, and in the workplace, they deal with lower pay, lack of credit for their contributions, roadblocks to promotion, sexual harassment, and more. And while organizations are looking to address these issues, too many gender-inclusion initiatives focus on how women themselves should respond, reinforcing the perception that these are "women's issues" and that men—often the most influential stakeholders in an organization—don't need to be involved.

Gender-in-the-workplace experts David G. Smith and W. Brad Johnson counter this perception. In this important book, they show that men have a crucial role to play in promoting gender equality at work. Research shows that when men are deliberately engaged in gender-inclusion programs, 96 percent of women in those organizations perceive real progress in gender equality, compared with only 30 percent of women in organizations without strong male engagement.

Good Guys is the first practical, research-based guide for how to be a male ally to women in the workplace. Filled with firsthand accounts from both men and women, and tips for getting started, the book shows how men can partner with their female colleagues to advance women's leadership and equality by breaking ingrained gender stereotypes, overcoming unconscious biases, developing and supporting the talented women around them, and creating productive and respectful working relationships with women.

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Ice Walker

James Raffan

From bestselling author James Raffan comes an enlightening and original story about a polar bear’s precarious existence in the changing Arctic, reminiscent of John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce.

Nanurjuk, “the bear-spirited one,” is hunting for seals on Hudson Bay, where ice never lasts more than one season. For her and her young, everything is in flux.

From the top of the world, Hudson Bay looks like an enormous paw print on the torso of the continent, and through a vast network of lakes and rivers, this bay connects to oceans across the globe. Here, at the heart of everything, walks Nanurjuk, or Nanu, one polar bear among the six thousand that traverse the 1.23 million square kilometers of ice and snow covering the bay.

For millennia, Nanu’s ancestors have roamed this great expanse, living, evolving, and surviving alongside human beings in one of the most challenging and unforgiving habitats on earth. But that world is changing. In the Arctic’s lands and waters, oil has been extracted—and spilled. As global temperatures have risen, the sea ice that Nanu and her young need to hunt seal and fish has melted, forcing them to wait on land where the delicate balance between them and their two-legged neighbors has now shifted.

This is the icescape that author and geographer James Raffan invites us to inhabit in Ice Walker. In precise and provocative prose, he brings readers inside Nanu’s world as she treks uncertainly around the heart of Hudson Bay, searching for nourishment for the children that grow inside her. She stops at nothing to protect her cubs from the dangers she can see—other bears, wolves, whales, human beings—and those she cannot.

By focusing his lens on this bear family, Raffan closes the gap between humans and bears, showing us how, like the water of the Hudson Bay, our existence—and our future—is tied to Nanu’s. He asks us to consider what might be done about this fragile world before it is gone for good. Masterful, vivid, and haunting, Ice Walker is an utterly unique piece of creative nonfiction and a deeply affecting call to action.

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Subprime Attention Crisis

Tim Hwang

From FSGO x Logic: a revealing examination of digital advertising and the internet's precarious foundation

In Subprime Attention Crisis, Tim Hwang investigates the way big tech financializes attention. In the process, he shows us how digital advertising—the beating heart of the internet—is at risk of collapsing, and that its potential demise bears an uncanny resemblance to the housing crisis of 2008.

From the unreliability of advertising numbers and the unregulated automation of advertising bidding wars, to the simple fact that online ads mostly fail to work, Hwang demonstrates that while consumers’ attention has never been more prized, the true value of that attention itself—much like subprime mortgages—is wildly misrepresented. And if online advertising goes belly-up, the internet—and its free services—will suddenly be accessible only to those who can afford it.

Deeply researched, convincing, and alarming, Subprime Attention Crisis will change the way you look at the internet, and its precarious future.

FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.

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A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future

Perri Klass

The fight against child mortality that transformed parenting, doctoring, and the way we live.

Only one hundred years ago, in even the world’s wealthiest nations, children died in great numbers—of diarrhea, diphtheria, and measles, of scarlet fever and tuberculosis. Throughout history, culture has been shaped by these deaths; diaries and letters recorded them, and writers such as Louisa May Alcott, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Eugene O’Neill wrote about and mourned them. Not even the powerful and the wealthy could escape: of Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s four children, only one survived to adulthood, and the first billionaire in history, John D. Rockefeller, lost his beloved grandson to scarlet fever. For children of the poor, immigrants, enslaved people and their descendants, the chances of dying were far worse.

The steady beating back of infant and child mortality is one of our greatest human achievements. Interweaving her own experiences as a medical student and doctor, Perri Klass pays tribute to groundbreaking women doctors like Rebecca Lee Crumpler, Mary Putnam Jacobi, and Josephine Baker, and to the nurses, public health advocates, and scientists who brought new approaches and scientific ideas about sanitation and vaccination to families. These scientists, healers, reformers, and parents rewrote the human experience so that—for the first time in human memory—early death is now the exception rather than the rule, bringing about a fundamental transformation in society, culture, and family life.

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Relax and Renew

Judith Hanson Lasater

The author of Living Your Yoga guides readers though the practice of restorative yoga and how it can help heal the effects of chronic stress
 
Whether you have five minutes or an hour, taking time out of each day to relax and renew is essential to living well. This book presents nurturing physical postures and breathing techniques called restorative yoga. When practiced regularly, they will help you heal the effects of chronic stress, recover from illness or injury, balance energy, and quiet the mind.

With clear instructions and photographs, Relax and Renew gently guides the experienced practitioner and enthusiastic beginner—regardless of age, flexibility, or strength—in techniques that will ease your way through this hectic world. Judith Lasater draws from decades of experience to provide readers with:
 
· A general restorative sequence
· Programs for back pain, headaches, insomnia, jet lag, and breathing problems
· Guidance for women during menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause
· Routines for when time is limited, including one for the office
· Practical suggestions that help you prevent stress and live more fully in the present moment
· And much more

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Storey's Curious Compendium of Practical and Obscure Skills

How-To Experts at Storey Publishing

Have you ever wondered how to capture a swarm of bees? Predict the weather by the clouds? And just how do you darn a pair of socks, anyway? Anyone curious about the myriad ways people have taught themselves to make, grow, and build things will find everything they’ve ever wondered about in this colorful, inviting volume. With dozens of useful and intriguing visual tutorials selected from Storey’s extensive library of how-to books, you can learn how to carve a turkey, create a butterfly garden, set up a dog agility course, keep a nature sketchbook, navigate by the stars, and more. Whether you plan to “do it yourself” or just love reading about how things are done, this rich compendium will educate, fascinate, spark conversation, and inspire new hobbies and experiences.

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Simply Living Well

Julia Watkins

Recipes, DIY projects, and inspiration for a beautiful and low-waste life, from the creator of @simply.living.well on Instagram

In this timely and motivational guide, author Julia Watkins shares rituals, recipes, and projects for living simply and sustainably at home. For every area of your household--kitchen, cleaning, wellness, bath, and garden--Julia shows you how to eliminate wasteful packaging, harmful ingredients, and disposable items. Practical checklists outline easy swaps (instead of disposable sponges, opt for biodegradable sponges or Swedish dishcloths; choose a bamboo toothbrush over a plastic one) and sustainable upgrades for common household tools and products. Projects include scrap apple cider vinegar, wool dryer balls, kitchen bowl covers and cloth produce bags, non-toxic dryer sheets, all-purpose citrus cleaner, herbal tinctures and balms, and more, plus recipes for package-free essentials like homemade nut milk, hummus, ketchup, salad dressings, and veggie stock.

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Pieometry

Lauren Ko

The pie-making genius behind the popular Instagram account @lokokitchen reveals the secrets of her mind-blowing creations in this gorgeous full-color cookbook featuring 50 incredible sweet and savory pie and tart designs

In a few short years, Lauren Ko made all hell bake loose, going from novice pie baker to internet star and creator of today’s most surprising and delightful pie and tart designs. Her unique geometric style uses fruit and dough cut and woven into stunning shapes to highlight color and texture. With an elegant symmetry that matches their knockout flavor, her dazzlingly intricate and inventive designs look difficult to produce, but can be achieved with little more than a knife, ruler, and some patience.

In Pieometry, Lauren reveals her secrets, sharing stories about her designs and the inspiration behind them. Warm and funny, she recounts the spectacular piesasters that led to some of her best creations, and breaks down her most beautiful designs, describing how to make naturally-colored dough, intricate weaves, and striking cut-out patterns. Pieometry provides clear, step-by-step instructions, accompanied by helpful photographs, which any patient baker can follow to build these pies from bottom crust to top in their own kitchens. Lauren makes it easy to mix and match doughs, fruits, fillings, and designs, and each recipe includes suggestions for alternative ingredients. Best of all, the beautiful finished pie and tart photos are just as much of a treat to look at as the pies are to eat. But even if you make a mistake here and there, her flavors save the day!

When it comes to flavor, Pieometry offers a balance of sweet and savory pies that are a feast for the senses, including:

  • Of a Shingle Mind: Honey ricotta tart with an herbed pastry shell and beets
  • Berried Treasure: Lavender blackberry cream with a shortbread crust and berries
  • Wave of Wonders: Cardamom coffee cream with a shortbread crust and pear
  • Once in a Tile: Pumpkin black sesame pie with a black sesame crust
  • C and Easy: Butternut bacon macaroni and cheese pie with a whole wheat cheddar chive crust
  • Squiggle Room: Grilled cinnamon pineapple pie with a basic butter crust

Whether you want to impress at the holidays or just spruce up a family meal, Pieometry is your guide to transforming a rustic traditional dessert into a modern masterpiece. 

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New World Sourdough

Bryan Ford

New World Sourdough is your go-to guide to baking delicious, inventive sourdough breads at home.

Learn how to make a sourdough starter, basic breads, as well as other innovative baked goods from start to finish with Instagram star Bryan Ford's (@artisanbryan) inviting, nontraditional approach to home baking. With less emphasis on perfecting crumb structure or obsessive temperature monitoring, Ford focuses on the tips and techniques he's developed in his own practice, inspired by his Honduran roots and New Orleans upbringing, to ensure your success and a good return on your time and effort. Ford's recipes include step-by-step instructions and photographs of all of the mixing, shaping, and baking techniques you'll need to know, with special attention paid to developing flavor as well as your own instincts.

New World Sourdough offers practical accessible techniques, and enticing, creative recipes you'll want to return to again and again, like:

  • Pan de Coco
  • Pita
  • Pizza dough
  • Challah, Focaccia, and Pullman loaves

Straightforward and unintimidating, New World Sourdough will get you started with your starter and then inspire you to keep experimenting and expanding your repertoire.

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The Dragonet Prophecy: Wings of Fire

Tui Sutherland

The seven dragon tribes have been at war for generations, locked in an endless battle over an ancient, lost treasure. A secret movement called the Talons of Peace is determined to bring an end to the fighting, with the help of a prophecy -- a foretelling that calls for great sacrifice. Five dragonets are collected to fulfill the prophecy, raised in a hidden cave and enlisted, against their will, to end the terrible war.

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Mulan Before the Sword

Grace Lin

An original tale, inspired by legends of Mulan Hua and popularized by Disney. When her sister is bitten by a poisonous spider, Mulan travels with a healer to find a flower from which the antidote can be made to save her sister's life.

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Mr. Lemoncello and the Titanium Ticket

Chris Grabenstein

Now with a brand-new look packed with shelf and kid appeal! Far away from his magical library, everyone's favorite game maker, Luigi Lemoncello, is building something new. Something SECRET. And he's about to let the world see it. He'll reveal that hidden deep within the Lemoncello-tastic new building is a single ticket. A titanium ticket. Four lucky boys and girls are about to win the chance to go inside the building on a spectacular scavenger hunt that will take them through bigger-than-life live-action games, towering, skyscraper-sized Jenga; dizzying real-life Chutes and Ladders; death-defying games of Rush Hour; plus ball pit moats and more! Each game will get the players closer to the titanium ticket. But the real secret? Mr. Lemoncello is thinking about his legacy, and whichever player finds the ticket will be the first to win a spot in an elite group of kids who will compete in the next books to win.

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Tune It Out

Jaime Sumner

When Lou crashes their pickup on a dark and snowy road, child services separate the mother-daughter duo. Now she has to start all over again at a fancy private school far away from anything she's ever known. With help from an outgoing new friend, her aunt and uncle, and the school counselor, she begins to see things differently. A sensory processing disorder isn't something to be ashamed of, and music might just be the thing that saves Lou, and her mom, too.

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Little Bird

Cynthia Voigt

"Little Bird faces many challenges when attempting to find her flock's good-luck charm that was lost during an attack by a wild fisher cat"-- Provided by publisher.

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Name Tags and Other Sixth-Grade Disasters

Ginger Garrett

Fun, funny, and fully heartfelt. Everyone needs true-blue friends like Lizbeth's. SuperChicken for life.
—Kristin L. Gray, author of The Amelia Six and Vilonia Beebe Takes Charge

One of those books that explores difficult topics—divorce, a new school, being dubbed a "weirdo"—with grace and good humor.
—Rebecca Petruck, author of Boy Bites Bug and Steering Toward Normal

This hilarious and heartfelt gem is moving straight to my "favorites" shelf.
—Lisa Lewis Tyre, author of Last in a Long Line of Rebels and Hope in the Holler

Twelve-year-old Lizbeth always has a plan, and those plans have usually worked—until now. No matter what she tries, she can't get rid of her dad's new girlfriend, Claire. And when she and her mom move, Lizbeth has to join a sixth-grade class already in progress, where her teacher makes her wear a name tag and she's seated with three notorious "weirdos."

When faced with mandatory participation in a school talent show, Lizbeth and the Weirdos decide to create self portraits. Reluctantly, Lizbeth finds herself becoming friends with people she thought she had nothing in common with—and coming to terms with the things she can't control.

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Before the Ever After

Jacqueline Woodson

National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson's stirring novel explores how a family moves forward when their glory days have passed.

For as long as ZJ can remember, his dad has been everyone's hero. As a charming, talented pro football star, he's as beloved to the neighborhood kids he plays with as he is to his millions of adoring sports fans. But lately life at ZJ's house is anything but charming. His dad is having trouble remembering things and seems to be angry all the time. ZJ's mom explains it's because of all the head injuries his dad sustained during his career. ZJ can understand that--but it doesn't make the sting any less real when his own father forgets his name. As ZJ contemplates his new reality, he has to figure out how to hold on tight to family traditions and recollections of the glory days, all the while wondering what their past amounts to if his father can't remember it. And most importantly, can those happy feelings ever be reclaimed when they are all so busy aching for the past?

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Class Act

Jerry Craft

New York Times bestselling author Jerry Craft returns with a companion book to New Kid, winner of the 2020 Newbery Medal, the Coretta Scott King Author Award, and the Kirkus Prize. This time, it's Jordan's friend Drew who takes center stage in another laugh-out-loud funny, powerful, and important story about being one of the few kids of color in a prestigious private school.

Eighth grader Drew Ellis is no stranger to the saying "You have to work twice as hard to be just as good." His grandmother has reminded him his entire life. But what if he works ten times as hard and still isn't afforded the same opportunities that his privileged classmates at the Riverdale Academy Day School take for granted?

To make matters worse, Drew begins to feel as if his good friend Liam might be one of those privileged kids. He wants to pretend like everything is fine, but it's hard not to withdraw, and even their mutual friend Jordan doesn't know how to keep the group together.

As the pressures mount, will Drew find a way to bridge the divide so he and his friends can truly accept each other? And most important, will he finally be able to accept himself?

New Kid, the first graphic novel to win the Newbery Medal, is now joined by Jerry Craft's powerful Class Act.

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The Willoughbys Return

Lois Lowry

It's been 30 years and with rising temperatures melting icy mountain tops the previously frozen Willoughbys have thawed out and are about to return! From living legend and Newbery medalist Lois Lowry comes a hilarious sequel to New York Times bestseller The Willoughbys - soon to be an animated film starring Ricky Gervais, Maya Rudolph, Terry Crews, Martin Short, Jane Krakowski, and Sean Cullen on Netflix!
Although they grew up as wretched orphans, the Willoughby siblings also became heirs to the the Melanoff candy company fortune. Everything has turned out just splendidly, except for one problem: Richie Willoughby, son of Timothy Willoughby, is an only child and is quite lonely.

Winifred and Winston Poore have long admired the toys of their neighbor Richie Willoughby and finally befriend the mysterious boy next door. But just as Richie finally begins to make friends, selling sweets is made illegal, and the family's fortune is put in jeopardy. To make matters worse, Richie's horrible Willoughby grandparents--frozen atop a Swiss mountain thirty years ago--have thawed, remain in perfect health, and are making their way home again.

What is the point of being the reclusive son of a billionaire when your father is no longer a billionaire? What is the future without candy in it? And is there any escaping the odiousness of the Willoughbys? These are the profound questions with which Newbery medalist and ignominious author Lois Lowry grapples in The Willoughbys Return.

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Becoming Muhammad Ali

James Patterson

From two heavy-hitters in children's literature comes a biographical novel of cultural icon Muhammad Ali.
Before he was a household name, Cassius Clay was a kid with struggles like any other. Kwame Alexander and James Patterson join forces to vividly depict his life up to age seventeen in both prose and verse, including his childhood friends, struggles in school, the racism he faced, and his discovery of boxing. Readers will learn about Cassius' family and neighbors in Louisville, Kentucky, and how, after a thief stole his bike, Cassius began training as an amateur boxer at age twelve. Before long, he won his first Golden Gloves bout and began his transformation into the unrivaled Muhammad Ali.
Fully authorized by and written in cooperation with the Muhammad Ali estate, and vividly brought to life by Dawud Anyabwile's dynamic artwork, Becoming Muhammad Ali captures the budding charisma and youthful personality of one of the greatest sports heroes of all time.

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The Traveller and Other Stories

Stuart Neville

"The book is divided into two parts: New Monsters, which contains seven chilling stand-alone tales that traverse and blend the genres of crime fiction, horror, and speculative fiction; and Old Friends, which contains five short pieces that reveal the origins or hidden backstories of Neville fan-favorite characters like Albert Ryan, Roberta Garrick, and of course Gerry Fegan. It also contains the long-awaited novella The Traveller, the companion piece to The Ghosts of Belfast and Collusion, which answers the question of what happened to Jack Lennon and his daughter, Ellen, after they fled Belfast seven years ago. The thirteen stories in this collection, which includes never-before-published pieces, span the decade since the publication of the now-classic The Ghosts of Belfast, and in his revelatory personal introduction Neville describes how each story fit into his career as a writer. Complete with a foreword from Irish crime fiction legend John Connolly, this volume is the perfect indulgence for fans of ghost stories and noir, and is a must-have for devotees of Neville's prizewinning Belfast Cycle novels"--

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The Lightness

Emily Temple

"A teen thriller in the vein of the '90s horror movie The Craft . . . A beautiful meditation on meditation . . . Frequently hilarious, and thoughtful throughout." --The New York Times Book Review

The Lightness could be the love child of Donna Tartt and Tana French, but its savage, glittering magic is all Emily Temple's own. --Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists

A Most Anticipated Novel by Entertainment Weekly - USA Today - Marie Claire - Elle - WSJ. Magazine - Glamour - Vulture - Bustle - Buzzfeed - The Millions - The Philadelphia Inquirer - Minneapolis Star Tribune - The Daily Beast - Refinery 29 - Publishers Weekly - Literary Hub - Electric Literature - and more!

A stylish, stunningly precise, and suspenseful meditation on adolescent desire, female friendship, and the female body that shimmers with rage, wit, and fierce longing--an audacious, darkly observant, and mordantly funny literary debut for fans of Emma Cline, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Jenny Offill.

One year ago, the person Olivia adores most in the world, her father, left home for a meditation retreat in the mountains and never returned. Yearning to make sense of his shocking departure and to escape her overbearing mother--a woman as grounded as her father is mercurial--Olivia runs away from home and retraces his path to a place known as the Levitation Center.

Once there, she enrolls in their summer program for troubled teens, which Olivia refers to as "Buddhist Boot Camp for Bad Girls". Soon, she finds herself drawn into the company of a close-knit trio of girls determined to transcend their circumstances, by any means necessary. Led by the elusive and beautiful Serena, and her aloof, secretive acolytes, Janet and Laurel, the girls decide this is the summer they will finally achieve enlightenment--and learn to levitate, to defy the weight of their bodies, to experience ultimate lightness.

But as desire and danger intertwine, and Olivia comes ever closer to discovering what a body--and a girl--is capable of, it becomes increasingly clear that this is an advanced and perilous practice, and there's a chance not all of them will survive. Set over the course of one fateful summer that unfolds like a fever dream, The Lightness juxtaposes fairy tales with quantum physics, cognitive science with religious fervor, and the passions and obsessions of youth with all of these, to explore concepts as complex as faith and as simple as loving people--even though you don't, and can't, know them at all.

"A suspenseful debut." -People Pick

--Jenny Offill, New York Times bestselling author of Weather and Dept. of Speculation

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The Secret French Recipes of Sophie Valroux

Samantha Vérant

A disgraced chef rediscovers her passion for food and her roots in this stunning novel rich in culture and full of delectable recipes.

French-born American chef Sophie Valroux had one dream: to be part of the 1% of female chefs running a Michelin-starred restaurant. From spending summers with her grandmother, who taught her the power of cooking and food, to attending the Culinary Institute of America, Sophie finds herself on the cusp of getting everything she's dreamed of.

Until her career goes up in flames.

Sabotaged by a fellow chef, Sophie is fired, leaving her reputation ruined and confidence shaken. To add fuel to the fire, Sophie learns that her grandmother has suffered a stroke and takes the red-eye to France. There, Sophie discovers the simple home she remembers from her childhood is now a luxurious château, complete with two restaurants and a vineyard. As Sophie tries to reestablish herself in the kitchen, she comes to understand the lengths people will go to for success and love, and how dreams can change.

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The Death of Vivek Oji

Akwaeke Emezi

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE

"Electrifying." -- O Magazine

Named one of the year's most anticipated books by The New York Times, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, BuzzFeed, Refinery29, and more

What does it mean for a family to lose a child they never really knew?

One afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son's body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet. What follows is the tumultuous, heart-wrenching story of one family's struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings. As adolescence gives way to adulthood, Vivek finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, foreign-born women married to Nigerian men. But Vivek's closest bond is with Osita, the worldly, high-spirited cousin whose teasing confidence masks a guarded private life. As their relationship deepens--and Osita struggles to understand Vivek's escalating crisis--the mystery gives way to a heart-stopping act of violence in a moment of exhilarating freedom.

Propulsively readable, teeming with unforgettable characters, The Death of Vivek Oji is a novel of family and friendship that challenges expectations--a dramatic story of loss and transcendence that will move every reader.

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Mrs. Sherlock Holmes

Brad Ricca

Nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime!

This is the shocking and amazing true story of the first female U.S. District Attorney and traveling detective who found missing 18-year-old Ruth Cruger when the entire NYPD had given up.

Mrs. Sherlock Holmes tells the true story of Grace Humiston, the lawyer, detective, and first woman U.S. District Attorney who turned her back on New York society life to become one of the nation's greatest crime-fighters during an era when women were still not allowed to vote. After agreeing to take the sensational case of missing eighteen-year-old Ruth Cruger, Grace and her partner, the hard-boiled detective Julius J. Kron, navigated a dangerous web of secret boyfriends, two-faced cops, underground tunnels, rumors of white slavery, and a mysterious pale man, in a desperate race against time.

Brad Ricca's Mrs. Sherlock Holmes is the first-ever narrative biography of this singular woman the press nicknamed after fiction's greatest detective. Her poignant story reveals important clues about missing girls, the media, and the real truth of crime stories.

Mrs. Sherlock Holmes is a nominee for the 2018 Edgar Awards for Best Fact Crime.

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American Overdose

Chris McGreal

A comprehensive portrait of a uniquely American epidemic -- devastating in its findings and damning in its conclusions

The opioid epidemic has been described as "one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine." But calling it a mistake is a generous rewriting of the history of greed, corruption, and indifference that pushed the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world's opioid painkillers.

Journeying through lives and communities wrecked by the epidemic, Chris McGreal reveals not only how Big Pharma hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs, but the corrupting of medicine and public institutions that let the opioid makers get away with it.

The starting point for McGreal's deeply reported investigation is the miners promised that opioid painkillers would restore their wrecked bodies, but who became targets of "drug dealers in white coats."

A few heroic physicians warned of impending disaster. But American Overdose exposes the powerful forces they were up against, including the pharmaceutical industry's coopting of the Food and Drug Administration and Congress in the drive to push painkillers -- resulting in the resurgence of heroin cartels in the American heartland. McGreal tells the story, in terms both broad and intimate, of people hit by a catastrophe they never saw coming. Years in the making, its ruinous consequences will stretch years into the future.

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Inheritance

Dani Shapiro

An Instant NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A LOS ANGELES TIMES, BOSTON GLOBE, WALL STREET JOURNAL, and NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER

Named A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by *Elle * Real Simple * Kirkus Reviews * BookPage *


"Memoir gold: a profound and exquisitely rendered exploration of identity and the true meaning of family." --People Magazine

"Beautifully written and deeply moving--it brought me to tears more than once."--Ruth Franklin, The New York Times Book Review


From the acclaimed, best-selling memoirist, novelist and host of the hit podcast Family Secrets, comes a memoir about the staggering family secret uncovered by a genealogy test: an exploration of the urgent ethical questions surrounding fertility treatments and DNA testing, and a profound inquiry of paternity, identity, and love.

In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had casually submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her beloved deceased father was not her biological father. Over the course of a single day, her entire history--the life she had lived--crumbled beneath her.
Inheritance is a book about secrets. It is the story of a woman's urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that had been scrupulously hidden from her for more than fifty years. It is a book about the extraordinary moment we live in, a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover.
Dani Shapiro's memoir unfolds at a breakneck pace--part mystery, part real-time investigation, part rumination on the ineffable combination of memory, history, biology, and experience that makes us who we are. Inheritance is a devastating and haunting interrogation of the meaning of kinship and identity, written with stunning intensity and precision.

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H is for Hawk

Helen Macdonald

Destined to be a classic of nature writing, the story of how one woman trained a goshawk. 

As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T. H. White’s tortured masterpiece, The Goshawk, which describes White’s struggle to train a hawk as a spiritual contest. 

When her father dies and she is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge. Then she fills the freezer with hawk food and unplugs the phone, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals. 

H is for Hawk is a record of a spiritual journey—an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald’s struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk’s taming and her own untaming. At the same time, it’s a kaleidoscopic biography of the brilliant and troubled novelist T. H. White, best known for The Once and Future King. It’s a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to try to reconcile death with life and love. 

As John Vaillant’s The Tiger depicted the dangerous collision of people and nature, H is for Hawk evokes our deepest longings for something wild. With stunning language that that resonates long after the book’s conclusion, H is for Hawk is destined to be a classic of nature writing.

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American Heiress

Jeffrey Toobin

 

 

A National Bestseller

From New Yorker staff writer and bestselling author of The Nine and The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson, the definitive account of the kidnapping and trial that defined an insane era in American history
On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a sophomore in college and heiress to the Hearst Family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbonese Liberation Army. The weird turns that followed in this already sensational take are truly astonishing--the Hearst family tried to secure Patty's release by feeding the people of Oakland and San Francisco for free; bank security cameras captured "Tania" wielding a machine gun during a roberry; the LAPD engaged in the largest police shoot-out in American history; the first breaking news event was broadcast live on telelvision stations across the country; and then there was Patty's circuslike trial, filled with theatrical courtroom confrontations and a dramatic last-minute reversal, after which the term "Stockholm syndrome" entered the lexicon.

Ultimately, the saga highlighted a decade in which America seemed to be suffering a collective nervous breakdown. American Heiress portrays the electrifying lunacy of the time and the toxic mic of sex, politics, and violence that swept up Patty Hearst and captivated the nation.

 

 

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The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

Dan Egan

New York Times Bestseller
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award

"Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review

The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.

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Fates and Furies

Lauren Groff

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A FINALIST FOR THE 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
NPR MORNING EDITION BOOK CLUB PICK
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, TIME, THE SEATTLE TIMES, MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE, SLATE, LIBRARY JOURNAL, KIRKUS, AND MANY MORE

"Lauren Groff is a writer of rare gifts, and Fates and Furies is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers - with comedy, tragedy, well-deployed erudition and unmistakable glimmers of brilliance throughout." --The New York Times Book Review (cover review)

"Elaborate, sensual...a writer whose books are too exotic and unusual to be missed."--The New York Times

"Fates and Furies is a clear-the-ground triumph." --Ron Charles, The Washington Post



From the award-winning, New York Times- bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia, one of the most anticipated books of the fall: an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception.

Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation.

Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.

At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.

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The Aviator's Wife

Melanie Benjamin

In the spirit of Loving Frank and The Paris Wife, acclaimed novelist Melanie Benjamin pulls back the curtain on the marriage of one of America’s most extraordinary couples: Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
 
“The history [is] exhilarating. . . . The Aviator’s Wife soars.”USA Today
 
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

When Anne Morrow, a shy college senior with hidden literary aspirations, travels to Mexico City to spend Christmas with her family, she meets Colonel Charles Lindbergh, fresh off his celebrated 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic. Enthralled by Charles’s assurance and fame, Anne is certain the aviator has scarcely noticed her. But she is wrong. Charles sees in Anne a kindred spirit, a fellow adventurer, and her world will be changed forever. The two marry in a headline-making wedding. In the years that follow, Anne becomes the first licensed female glider pilot in the United States. But despite this and other major achievements, she is viewed merely as the aviator’s wife. The fairy-tale life she once longed for will bring heartbreak and hardships, ultimately pushing her to reconcile her need for love and her desire for independence, and to embrace, at last, life’s infinite possibilities for change and happiness.
 
Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.

Praise for The Aviator’s Wife
 
“Remarkable . . . The Aviator’s Wife succeeds [in] putting the reader inside Anne Lindbergh’s life with her famous husband.”The Denver Post

“Anne Morrow Lindbergh narrates the story of the Lindberghs’ troubled marriage in all its triumph and tragedy.”USA Today
 
“[This novel] will fascinate history buffs and surprise those who know of her only as ‘the aviator’s wife.’ ”—People
 
“It’s hard to quit reading this intimate historical fiction.”—The Dallas Morning News
 
“Fictional biography at its finest.”Booklist (starred review)

“Utterly unforgettable.”Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“An intimate examination of the life and emotional mettle of Anne Morrow.”The Washington Post

“A story of both triumph and pain that will take your breath away.”—Kate Alcott, author of The Dressmaker

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The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Heather Morris

The five million copy bestseller and one of the bestselling books of the 21st Century.

Chosen for the Richard and Judy Bookclub.

I tattooed a number on her arm. She tattooed her name on my heart.

In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival - scratching numbers into his fellow victims' arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust.

Waiting in line to be tattooed, terrified and shaking, was a young girl. For Lale - a dandy, a jack-the-lad, a bit of a chancer - it was love at first sight. And he was determined not only to survive himself, but to ensure this woman, Gita, did, too.

So begins one of the most life-affirming, courageous, unforgettable and human stories of the Holocaust: the love story of the tattooist of Auschwitz.


Don't miss Heather Morris's next book, Stories of Hope. Coming September 2020.


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'Extraordinary - moving, confronting and uplifting . . . I recommend it unreservedly' Greame Simsion

'A moving and ultimately uplifting story of love, loyalties and friendship amidst the horrors of war . . . It's a triumph.' Jill Mansell

'A sincere . . . moving attempt to speak the unspeakable' Sunday Times

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The Furnace Girl

Kraig W. Moreland

On October 29,1928, in the quaint Chicago suburb of Lake Bluff, 30-year-old Elfrieda Knaak was found naked, with burns over more than half of her body, and propped up next to a furnace in the basement of the Village Hall. The events that took place in the following two weeks turned the idyllic village of Lake Bluff upside down as local and county law enforcement officials scrambled to determine what took place and who was responsible. Ninety years later, the questions are still unanswered-- How did she get there? By what means was she so badly burned? Who could have perpetrated such a heinous crime? This baffling story became a nation-wide media sensation, thrusting the small town of Lake Bluff and its beloved Village Hall onto the front pages of newspapers from New York to Los Angeles. The Furnace Girl is Kraig Moreland's theory of what really happened to Elfrieda Knaak, as told to and beautifully written by Toby Jones, It is a stranger-than-fiction story, told through the eyes of Griff Morgan, a young orphan boy, whose harrowing journey makes him an accidental witness to what still remains one of the most puzzling, unsolved crimes of the early 1900s. In this fictionalized account of the mystery, Griff and his young sister land at the Lake Bluff Orphanage, where they must learn to navigate their new surroundings and face their fears. The 12-year-old Griff stumbles upon unlawful activity throughout the town, from Elfrieda's illicit relationship with a married man, (and prime suspect) to characters so dark that he feels his safety slipping away with every day. -- Amazon

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A Tale for the Time Being

Ruth Ozeki

 

 

A brilliant, unforgettable novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki—shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award“A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

Full of Ozeki’s signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.

 

 

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The Chaos Curse (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #3)

Sayantani DasGupta

Kiranmala must leave the Kingdom Beyond and travel to her hometown of Parsippany to save Prince Lal, who has been spirited to the unlikeliest of places -- a tree in the yard of her best-enemy-for-life. She also faces evil serpents (of course!), plus a frightening prophecy about her role in the coming conflict between good and evil. Most troubling of all, though, is the way reality all around her seems to waver and flicker at odd moments. Could it be that the Anti-Chaos Committee's efforts are causing a dangerous disruption in the multiverse?

 

 

Kiran must grapple with the increasingly tangled threads that threaten to ensnare her...and everyone in the world and the Kingdom Beyond.

 

 

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Poppy

Jennifer Li Shotz

From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Max comes a heartwarming, middle grade story about a misunderstood rescue dog, Poppy, who finds kinship with an outcast girl on the coast of Northern California.

Poppy is a dog with a problem. She has too much energy, and her elderly owner can keep her only if she can be trained. When twelve-year-old Hannah moves to the coast of Northern California, she thinks she can help turn this rambunctious puppy into the good dog she knows Poppy is. But Hannah realizes Poppy’s reputation as a pit bull means she has to work even harder to prove that Poppy and dogs like her deserve a second chance. Will Hannah train Poppy into the perfect dog before it’s too late?

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Something to Say

Lisa Moore Ramee

From the author of A Good Kind of Trouble, a Walter Dean Myers Honor Book, comes another unforgettable story about finding your voice--and finding your people. Perfect for fans of Sharon Draper, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds.

Eleven-year-old Jenae doesn't have any friends--and she's just fine with that. She's so good at being invisible in school, it's almost like she has a superpower, like her idol, Astrid Dane. At home, Jenae has plenty of company, like her no-nonsense mama; her older brother, Malcolm, who is home from college after a basketball injury; and her beloved grandpa, Gee.

Then a new student shows up at school--a boy named Aubrey with fiery red hair and a smile that won't quit. Jenae can't figure out why he keeps popping up everywhere she goes. The more she tries to push him away, the more he seems determined to be her friend. Despite herself, Jenae starts getting used to having him around.

But when the two are paired up for a class debate about the proposed name change for their school, Jenae knows this new friendship has an expiration date. Aubrey is desperate to win and earn a coveted spot on the debate team.

There's just one problem: Jenae would do almost anything to avoid speaking up in front of an audience--including risking the first real friendship she's ever had.

--Erin Entrada Kelly, Newbery Medal-winning author of Hello, Universe

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If I Had Your Vote--By the Cat in the Hat

Random House

Just in time for Election Day, this hilarious new Beginner Book featuring Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat--and the changes he'd make if elected president of the United States--is perfect for introducing young readers to the White House!

Think politics is boring for kids? Think again! If the Cat in the Hat is elected president, life in the White House is about to get a lot more interesting--and funny! The Cat plans to shake things up. On his agenda: To change the shape of the Oval Office (to make it far more OVAL-ER-ER); to replant the Rose Garden with Seussian shrubbery; to paint smiles on portraits of frowning world leaders; and (among other things) to shoot a SOCK-IT rocket into space to shower the United States with an explosion of socks! Written in rhyme and featuring a cast of characters from The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, this is the perfect, kid-friendly way to introduce beginning readers to life in the White House AND to the Cat in the Hat.

Originally created by Dr. Seuss, Beginner Books encourage children to read all by themselves, with simple words and illustrations that give clues to their meaning.

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Pinkalicious and the Merminnies

Victoria Kann

Readers can watch Pinkalicious and Peterrific on the funtastic PBS Kids TV series Pinkalicious & Peterrific!

Pinkalicious and her friends have a mermazing time in this Level One I Can Read adventure that celebrates the power of friendship.

Pinkalicious likes her new friend Splash the merminnie, even though he is a show-off. When Splash’s flashy tricks get him in trouble, it’s up to Pinkalicious and her friends to save him!

Pinkalicious and the Merminnies is a Level One I Can Read, which means it’s perfect for children learning to sound out words and sentences.

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Jack at Bat

Mac Barnett

From New York Times bestselling author Mac Barnett and Geisel Award-winning illustrator Greg Pizzoli, an uproarious early reader series about a mischievous rabbit, a cranky old lady, and a lovable dog.

The Lady and Rex have a baseball game against the Big City Brats. Jack is not allowed to swing the bat, so he is told to be the Bat Boy. That is, until the Lady Town Ladies and the Big City Brats are tied. It's up to Jack to hit a home run, but on the way to home plate he spots some snacks . . .

Welcome to the laugh-out-loud and irreverent world of Jack, a new early reader series by the New York Times bestselling and award-winning team of Mac Barnett and Greg Pizzoli.

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Hungry Hearts

Elsie Chapman

“A briliant multicultual collection that reminds readers that stories about food are rarely just about the food alone.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A stunning collection of short stories about the intersection of family, culture, and food in the lives in teens, from bestselling and critically acclaimed authors, including Sandhya Menon, Anna-Marie McLemore, and Rin Chupeco.

A shy teenager attempts to express how she really feels through the pastries she makes at her family’s pasteleria. A tourist from Montenegro desperately seeks a magic soup dumpling that can cure his fear of death. An aspiring chef realizes that butter and soul are the key ingredients to win a cooking competition that could win him the money to save his mother’s life.

Welcome to Hungry Hearts Row, where the answers to most of life’s hard questions are kneaded, rolled, baked. Where a typical greeting is, “Have you had anything to eat?” Where magic and food and love are sometimes one in the same.

Told in interconnected short stories, Hungry Hearts explores the many meanings food can take on beyond mere nourishment. It can symbolize love and despair, family and culture, belonging and home.

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Gunslinger Girl

Lyndsay Ely

James Patterson presents a bold new heroine -- a cross between Katniss Everdeen and Annie Oakley: Serendipity Jones, the fastest sharpshooter in tomorrow's West.

Seventeen-year-old Serendipity "Pity" Jones inherited two things from her mother: a pair of six shooters and perfect aim. She's been offered a life of fame and fortune in Cessation, a glittering city where lawlessness is a way of life. But the price she pays for her freedom may be too great . . .

In this extraordinary debut from Lyndsay Ely, the West is once again wild after a Second Civil War fractures the U.S. into a broken, dangerous land. Pity's struggle against the dark and twisted underbelly of a corrupt city will haunt you long after the final bullet is shot.

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White Rose

Kip Wilson

“In a searing indictment of silent complicity, White Rose shines a light on one remarkable young woman’s insistence on the power of truth, no matter the cost. A timely call to resistance.” – Joy McCullough, author of Blood Water Paint

White Rose is a resonant testament to courage. In a time of horrific brutality, young people found a nonviolent way to resist. Told in the form of poetry, the story of their hopes is honored and brought back to life, still relevant today, when regimes that spread hatred are once again thriving, and words are our most powerful defensive weapon.”  – Margarita Engle, author of Newbery Honoree The Surrender Tree and 2017-2019 Young People's Poet Laureate.

"Both heart-wrenching and inspiring, Sophie Scholl's story, as retold by Kip Wilson in White Rose, is a stunning reminder to stand against evil, even when you stand alone. This is the kind of book that sticks in your heart long after you've finished. An incredible story of heroism incredibly told." – Mackenzi Lee, author of New York Times Bestseller The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice & Virtue

"White Rose
 is a deftly plotted, absorbing read. A bold tribute to a brave hero of the German resistance during World War II. Wilson’s debut is a triumph!"
—Melanie Crowder, author of National Jewish Book Award finalist Audacity

“A graceful, moving portrait of a heroic young woman’s defiant refusal to remain complicit with Nazi oppression.” – Julie Berry, Printz Honor author of The Passion of Dolssa

 A gorgeous and timely novel based on the incredible story of Sophie Scholl, a young German college student who challenged the Nazi regime during World War II as part of The White Rose, a non-violent resistance group.

Disillusioned by the propaganda of Nazi Germany, Sophie Scholl, her brother, and his fellow soldiers formed the White Rose, a group that wrote and distributed anonymous letters criticizing the Nazi regime and calling for action from their fellow German citizens. The following year, Sophie and her brother were arrested for treason and interrogated for information about their collaborators. This debut novel recounts the lives of Sophie and her friends and highlights their brave stand against fascism in Nazi Germany.

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The Naturals

Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Seventeen-year-old Cassie is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. But, it's not a skill that she's ever taken seriously. That is, until the FBI come knocking: they've begun a classified program that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie. What Cassie doesn't realize is that there's more at risk than a few unsolved homicides???especially when she's sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own. Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms close. Caught in a lethal game of cat and mouse with a killer, the Naturals are going to have to use all of their gifts just to survive. Think The Mentalist meets Pretty Little Liars???Jennifer Lynn-Barnes' The Naturals is a gripping psychological thriller with killer appeal, a to-die-for romance, and the bones of a gritty and compelling new series.

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Walk on Earth a Stranger

Rae Carson

A New York Times bestseller and National Book Award longlist selection

The first book in a new trilogy from acclaimed New York Times–bestselling author Rae Carson. A young woman with the magical ability to sense the presence of gold must flee her home, taking her on a sweeping and dangerous journey across Gold Rush–era America. Walk on Earth a Stranger begins an epic saga from one of the finest writers of young adult literature.

Lee Westfall has a secret. She can sense the presence of gold in the world around her. Veins deep beneath the earth, pebbles in the river, nuggets dug up from the forest floor. The buzz of gold means warmth and life and home—until everything is ripped away by a man who wants to control her. Left with nothing, Lee disguises herself as a boy and takes to the trail across the country. Gold was discovered in California, and where else could such a magical girl find herself, find safety?

Rae Carson, author of the acclaimed Girl of Fire and Thorns series, dazzles with the first book in the Gold Seer Trilogy, introducing a strong heroine, a perilous road, a fantastical twist, and a slow-burning romance, as only she can.

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Not Your Sidekick

C. B. Lee

Welcome to Andover, where superpowers are common, but internships are complicated. Just ask high school nobody, Jessica Tran. Despite her heroic lineage, Jess is resigned to a life without superpowers and is merely looking to beef up her college applications when she stumbles upon the perfect (paid ) internship--only it turns out to be for the town's most heinous supervillain. On the upside, she gets to work with her longtime secret crush, Abby, whom Jess thinks may have a secret of her own. Then there's the budding attraction to her fellow intern, the mysterious "M," who never seems to be in the same place as Abby. But what starts as a fun way to spite her superhero parents takes a sudden and dangerous turn when she uncovers a plot larger than heroes and villains altogether.

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This Mortal Coil

Emily Suvada

“Redefines ‘unputdownable.’” —Amie Kaufman, New York Times bestselling author of Iluminae
“I was thrilled. I was shocked.” —NPR
“Stunning twists and turns.” —BCCB (starred review)

In this gripping debut novel, seventeen-year-old Cat must use her gene-hacking skills to decode her late father’s message concealing a vaccine to a horrifying plague.

Catarina Agatta is a hacker. She can cripple mainframes and crash through firewalls, but that’s not what makes her special. In Cat’s world, people are implanted with technology to recode their DNA, allowing them to change their bodies in any way they want. And Cat happens to be a gene-hacking genius.

That’s no surprise, since Cat’s father is Dr. Lachlan Agatta, a legendary geneticist who may be the last hope for defeating a plague that has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. But during the outbreak, Lachlan was kidnapped by a shadowy organization called Cartaxus, leaving Cat to survive the last two years on her own.

When a Cartaxus soldier, Cole, arrives with news that her father has been killed, Cat’s instincts tell her it’s just another Cartaxus lie. But Cole also brings a message: before Lachlan died, he managed to create a vaccine, and Cole needs Cat’s help to release it and save the human race.

Now Cat must decide who she can trust: The soldier with secrets of his own? The father who made her promise to hide from Cartaxus at all costs? In a world where nature itself can be rewritten, how much can she even trust herself?

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The Poet X

Elizabeth Acevedo

Winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Pura Belpré Award!

Fans of Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds will fall hard for this astonishing New York Times-bestselling novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet, about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth. 

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.

But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about.

With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can’t stop thinking about performing her poems.

Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.

“Crackles with energy and snaps with authenticity and voice.” —Justina Ireland, author of Dread Nation

“An incredibly potent debut.” —Jason Reynolds, author of the National Book Award Finalist Ghost

“Acevedo has amplified the voices of girls en el barrio who are equal parts goddess, saint, warrior, and hero.” —Ibi Zoboi, author of American Street

This young adult novel, a selection of the Schomburg Center's Black Liberation Reading List, is an excellent choice for accelerated tween readers in grades 6 to 8, in the classroom or for homeschooling.

Plus don't miss Elizabeth Acevedo's With the Fire on High and Clap When You Land!

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Most Dangerous

Steve Sheinkin

Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War is New York Times bestselling author Steve Sheinkin's award-winning nonfiction account of an ordinary man who wielded the most dangerous weapon: the truth.

“Easily the best study of the Vietnam War available for teen readers.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award winner
A National Book Award finalist
A Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon book
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature finalist
Selected for the Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People List

In 1964, Daniel Ellsberg was a U.S. government analyst, helping to plan a war in Vietnam. It was the height of the Cold War, and the government would do anything to stop the spread of communism—with or without the consent of the American people.

As the fighting in Vietnam escalated, Ellsberg turned against the war. He had access a top-secret government report known as the Pentagon Papers, and he knew it could blow the lid off of years of government lies. But did he have the right to expose decades of presidential secrets? And what would happen to him if he did it?

A lively book that interrogates the meanings of patriotism, freedom, and integrity, the National Book Award finalist Most Dangerous further establishes Steve Sheinkin—author of Newbery Honor book Bomb as a leader in children's nonfiction.

This thoroughly-researched and documented book can be worked into multiple aspects of the common core curriculum.

“Gripping.”—New York Times Book Review

“A master of fast-paced histories...[this] is Sheinkin’s most compelling one yet. ”—Washington Post

Also by Steve Sheinkin:

Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon
The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery
Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team
The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights
Which Way to the Wild West?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About Westward Expansion
King George: What Was His Problem?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the American Revolution
Two Miserable Presidents: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the Civil War
Born to Fly: The First Women's Air Race Across America

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Salt to the Sea

Ruta Sepetys

 

New York Times Bestseller and winner of the Carnegie Medal! "Masterfully crafted"The Wall Street Journal

For readers of Between Shades of Gray and All the Light We Cannot See, Ruta Sepetys returns to WWII in this epic novel that shines a light on one of the war's most devastating—yet unknown—tragedies.

World War II is drawing to a close in East Prussia and thousands of refugees are on a desperate trek toward freedom, many with something to hide. Among them are Joana, Emilia, and Florian, whose paths converge en route to the ship that promises salvation, the Wilhelm Gustloff. Forced by circumstance to unite, the three find their strength, courage, and trust in each other tested with each step closer to safety.

Just when it seems freedom is within their grasp, tragedy strikes. Not country, nor culture, nor status matter as all ten thousand people—adults and children alike—aboard must fight for the same thing: survival.

Told in alternating points of view and perfect for fans of Anthony Doerr's Pulitzer Prize-winning All the Light We Cannot See, Erik Larson's Dead Wake, and Elizabeth Wein's Printz Honor Book Code Name Verity, this masterful work of historical fiction is inspired by the real-life tragedy that was the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloffthe greatest maritime disaster in history. As she did in Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys unearths a shockingly little-known casualty of a gruesome war, and proves that humanity and love can prevail, even in the darkest of hours.

Praise for Salt to the Sea:
Featured on NPR's Morning Edition  ♦  "Superlative...masterfully crafted...[a] powerful work of historical fiction."—The Wall Street Journal  ♦  "[Sepetys is] a master of YA fiction…she once again anchors a panoramic view of epic tragedy in perspectives that feel deeply textured and immediate."—Entertainment Weekly  ♦  "Riveting...powerful...haunting."—The Washington Post  ♦ "Compelling for both adult and teenage readers."—New York Times Book Review  ♦  "Intimate, extraordinary, artfully crafted...brilliant."—Shelf Awareness  ♦  "Historical fiction at its very, very best."—The Globe and Mail  ♦  "[H]aunting, heartbreaking, hopeful and altogether gorgeous...one of the best young-adult novels to appear in a very long time."—Salt Lake Tribune  ♦  *"This haunting gem of a novel begs to be remembered."—Booklist  ♦  *"Artfully told and sensitively crafted...will leave readers weeping."—School Library Journal  ♦  A PW and SLJ 2016 Book of the Year

Praise for Between Shades of Gray:
A New York Times Notable Book  ♦  A Wall Street Journal Best Children’s Book  ♦  A PWSLJ, Booklist, and Kirkus Best Book  ♦  iTunes 2011 Rewind Best Teen Novel  ♦  A Carnegie Medal and William C. Morris Finalist  ♦  A New York Times and International Bestseller  ♦  "Few books are beautifully written, fewer still are important; this novel is both."—The Washington Post  ♦  *"[A]n important book that deserves the widest possible readership."—Booklist

 

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Orbiting Jupiter

Gary D. Schmidt

The two-time Newbery Honor winner Gary D. Schmidt delivers the shattering story of Joseph, a father at thirteen, who has never seen his daughter, Jupiter. After spending time in a juvenile facility, he’s placed with a foster family on a farm in rural Maine. Here Joseph, damaged and withdrawn, meets twelve-year-old Jack, who narrates the account of the troubled, passionate teen who wants to find his baby at any cost. In this riveting novel, two boys discover the true meaning of family and the sacrifices it requires.

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Renegades

Marissa Meyer

NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

From #1 New York Times-bestselling author Marissa Meyer, comes a high-stakes world of adventure, passion, danger, and betrayal.

Secret Identities.
Extraordinary Powers.
She wants vengeance. He wants justice.

The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies—humans with extraordinary abilities—who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned. As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone...except the villains they once overthrew.

Nova has a reason to hate the Renegades, and she is on a mission for vengeance. As she gets closer to her target, she meets Adrian, a Renegade boy who believes in justice—and in Nova. But Nova's allegiance is to the villains who have the power to end them both.

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Lift-the-Flap Atlas

Lonely Planet Kids

This interactive atlas treats young readers to a hands-on journey around the world. Each page turn brings the continent to life with flaps to lift, detailed illustrations and facts about, people, animals, and fun places to visit.

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The World's Poorest President Speaks Out

Kusaba Yoshimi

"A poor person is not someone who has little, but one who needs infinitely more, and more, and more." Thus spoke José Mujica, then the President of Uruguay, before the United Nations in 2012. Paraphrasing the wisdom of the great thinker Seneca, he asked the world to question the dogma of consumption that has driven us into environmental and economic crisis. Often referred to as the worlds "poorest" president, in part because of his practice of donating 90% of his $12,000 monthly salary to charity, José Mujica lived his words and proved that one need not have money to be rich. In The World's Poorest President Speaks Out, José Mujica's famous speech comes to life as he asks us to remember our neighbors, our children, and the Earth.

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She Leads

June Smalls

She is the Queen. The matriarch.

She leads her daughters and their daughters.

Inspiring text and striking illustrations follow the empowering journey of an elephant matriarch as she leads her family through the wilds of Africa. With facts about African elephants on every spread and a message that will encourage young girls to be the trailblazers of their generation, She Leads offers an incredible story and an unforgettable tribute to the strength of a true leader.

Open your eyes, princess. One day you will lead.

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The Reason for the Seasons

Ellie Peterson

We all know there are four seasons in a year. But HOW do we know? Join intrepid young scientist-adventurer Joulia Copernicus on a journey around the world as she explains with humor and wit how we know what causes the seasons.

Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall -- we all have a favorite season. But what makes the seasons happen in the first place? Ellie Peterson's clear, concise language and bold, kid-friendly illustrations bring science to life through narrator Joulia Copernicus, a strong and adventurous kid scientist. Kids will laugh while learning at the same time about the science behind the changing of the seasons throughout the year.

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Tiny Bird

Robert Burleigh

Robert Burleigh's narrative nonfiction picture book follows a hummingbird’s migration south for the winter, with stunning art by Wendell Minor.

When the last summer flowers open their petals to the sun, it’s time for a tiny ruby-throated hummingbird to dip its beak into the heart of each bloom, extracting as much nectar as possible before the hard trip ahead.

Today is the day Tiny Bird begins its amazing journey south for the winter, traveling as fast as thirty miles an hour for hundreds of miles on end. The trip is long, with savage weather and many predators along the way, but Tiny Bird is built for this epic journey and eventually arrives at its winter home.

This inspiring migratory and life cycle story celebrates the important and impressive feat of a small but mighty creature.

Christy Ottaviano Books

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I Voted

Mark Shulman

With the next presidential election upon us, this witty, nonpartisan book will help explain the concept of voting to the youngest readers.

I Voted explains the concept of choosing, individually, and as a group, from making a simple choice: "Which do you like better, apples or oranges?", to selecting a class pet, to even more complicated decisions, like electing community representatives.

You may not always get want you want, but there are strategies to better your odds!

Serge Bloch's effortless and charming illustrations paired with Mark Shulman's funny and timely text create a perfect resource for discussing current events with your children.

Backmatter includes information about the United States electoral process.

Selected for the CBC Champions of Change Showcase
A Junior Library Guild Selection!

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World of Glass

Jan Greenberg

The first children's book about Dale Chihuly, the world-renowned glass sculptor

His crew calls him Maestro. Thousands of fans call him a magician. Over the past five decades, Dale Chihuly (b. 1941) has created some of the most innovative and popular works of art in museums and gardens around the world. Authors Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan met with Chihuly in his studio for exclusive interviews discussing his early life, his passion for glassblowing, and his dazzling works. Lavishly illustrated with Chihuly's art and family photographs, this book discusses Chihuly's workshop and his glassblowing technique. The book includes a step-by-step look at how blown glass is created, a list of places to see Chihuly's artwork, endnotes, a bibliography, and an index.

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The Kitchen Pantry Scientist: Chemistry for Kids

Liz Lee Heinecke

Replicate a chemical reaction similar to one Marie Curie used to purify radioactive elements! Distill perfume using a method created in ancient Mesopotamia by a woman named Tapputi! Aspiring chemists will discover these and more amazing role models and memorable experiments in Chemistry for Kids, the debut book of The Kitchen Pantry Scientist's Guides series.

This engaging guide offers a series of snapshots of 25 scientists famous for their work with chemistry, from ancient history through today. Each lab tells the story of a scientist along with some background about the importance of their work, and a description of where it is still being used or reflected in today’s world. A step-by-step illustrated experiment paired with each story offers kids a hands-on opportunity for exploring concepts the scientists pursued, or are working on today. Experiments range from very simple projects using materials you probably already have on hand, to more complicated ones that may require a few inexpensive items you can purchase online. Just a few of the incredible people and scientific concepts you'll explore:

Galen b. 129 AD 
Make soap from soap base, oil and citrus peels.
Modern application: medical disinfectants

Joseph Priestly b. 1733
Carbonate a beverage using CO2 from yeast or baking soda and vinegar mixture.
Modern application: soda fountains

Alessandra Volta b. 1745
Make a battery using a series of lemons and use it to light a LED.
Modern application: car battery

Tu Youyou b. 1930
Extract compounds from plants.
Modern application: pharmaceuticals and cosmetics

People have been tinkering with chemistry for thousands of years. Whether out of curiosity or by necessity, Homo sapiens have long loved to play with fire: mixing and boiling concoctions to see what interesting, beautiful, and useful amalgamations they could create. Early humans ground pigments to create durable paint for cave walls, and over the next 70 thousand years or so as civilizations took hold around the globe, people learned to make better medicines and discovered how to extract, mix, and smelt metals for cooking vessels, weapons, and jewelry. Early chemists distilled perfume, made soap, and perfected natural inks and dyes.

Modern chemistry was born around 250 years ago, when measurement, mathematics, and the scientific method were officially applied to experimentation. In 1896, after the first draft of the periodic table was published, scientists rushed to fill in the blanks. The elemental discoveries that followed gave scientists the tools to visualize the building blocks of matter for the first time in history, and they proceeded to deconstruct the atom. Since then, discovery has accelerated at an unprecedented rate. At times, modern chemistry and its creations have caused heartbreaking, unthinkable harm, but more often than not, it makes our lives better.

With this fascinating, hands-on exploration of the history of chemistry, inspire the next generation of great scientists.

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Dictionary for a Better World

Irene Latham

How can we make the world a better place? This inspiring resource for middle-grade readers is organized as a dictionary; each entry presents a word related to creating a better world, such as ally, empathy, or respect. For each word, there is a poem, a quote from an inspiring person, a personal anecdote from the authors, and a "try it" prompt for an activity.

This second poetic collaboration from Irene Latham and Charles Waters builds upon themes of diversity and inclusiveness from their previous book Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship. Illustrations from Iranian-British artist Mehrdokht Amini offer readers a rich visual experience.

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Alphamaniacs

Paul Fleischman

Are you a word person? A curiosity seeker? An explorer? Take a look at these twenty-six extraordinary individuals for whom love of language is an extreme sport.

Step right up and read the genuine stories of writers so intoxicated by the shapes and sound of language that they collected, dissected, and constructed verbal wonders of the most extraordinary kind. Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote his memoirs by blinking his left eyelid, unable to move the rest of his body. Frederic Cassidy was obsessed with the language of place, and after posing hundreds of questions to folks all over the United States, amassed (among other things) 176 words for dust bunnies. Georges Perec wrote a novel without using the letter e (so well that at least one reviewer didn't notice its absence), then followed with a novella in which e was the only vowel. A love letter to all those who love words, language, writing, writers, and stories, Alphamaniacs is a stunningly illustrated collection of mini-biographies about the most daring and peculiar of writers and their audacious, courageous, temerarious way with words.

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Narwhals and Other Whales

Mary Pope Osborne

Track the facts about the unicorn of the sea--the narwhal--and its closest relatives!

When Jack and Annie came back from their adventure in Magic Tree House #33: Narwhal on a Sunny Night, they had lots of questions. What is a narwhal? Why is it nicknamed the unicorn of the sea? What other whales live in the arctic? How do they survive the cold? Find out the answers to these questions and more as Jack and Annie track the facts about narwhals and other whales.

Filled with up-to-date information, photographs, illustrations, and fun tidbits from Jack and Annie, Fact Trackers are the perfect way for kids to find out more about the topics they discover in their favorite Magic Tree House adventures.

Did you know that there's a Magic Tree House book for every kid?
Magic Tree House: Adventures with Jack and Annie, perfect for readers who are just beginning chapter books
Merlin Missions: More challenging adventures for the experienced reader
Fact Trackers: Nonfiction companions to your favorite Magic Tree House adventures

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The Healthy Junior Chef Cookbook

Williams-Sonoma

This engaging collection of more than 70 kid-friendly recipes for breakfast, soups, salads, main courses, snacks and dessert will have kids cooking up surprisingly healthy favorites without sacrificing any of the flavors and ingredients they love.

Healthy eating doesn’t have to be a bummer for the school-age crowd. With this collection of 70+ tasty and nourishing recipes—kid-proven favorites plus fun ideas for serving them—young chefs will learn to cook enticing dishes that are also surprisingly nutritious. With recipes such as healthyish banana bread, fruit-and-nut granola bars, inside-out veggie sushi rolls, and chicken-pineapple kebabs, aspiring cooks will be whipping up healthy dishes, featuring flavors they love, for all times of the day. Helpful step-by-step instructions, lavish photographs of finished dishes, colorful illustrations, and expert tips and tricks will inspire kids to eat well with yummy dishes they make themselves. This fifth volume in the Junior Chef series continues to inspire and engage kids in the kitchen with easy-to-follow recipes, fun serving ideas, and straightforward cooking techniques.

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Stephen Hawking

Cristina Oxtra

Stephen Hawking was one of the greatest minds of our time. His theories about the universe have changed the way we think about black holes and the Big Bang. Learn more about the physicist on wheels who traveled the world. The Capstone Interactive edition comes with simultaneous access for every student in your school and includes read aloud audio recorded by professional voice over artists.

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Thurgood Marshall

Teri Kanefield

The story of the brilliant lawyer who successfully argued the case that ended legal racial segregation in America

When Thurgood Marshall--the great grandson of a slave--was born, African Americans were denied equal rights in America. Segregation was legal. Lynching was common. In some places, African Americans were entirely excluded from public life; they were forbidden to enter public parks and museums or use public swimming pools and restrooms.

After being denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School because of his race, Marshall enrolled at Howard University. He graduated first in his class and set out as a young lawyer determined to achieve equality for all Americans. Here is the story of how he did it--how he devised his legal strategy for expanding "we the people," to include all people.

Thurgood Marshall explores his life, from his childhood in Baltimore to his trailblazing career as a civil rights lawyer, and finally his years as a United States Supreme Court justice.
 

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Who Is David Beckham?

Ellen Labrecque

Whether you call it football or soccer, there's no disputing that David Beckham is one of the best players in the history of the game!

Whenever a young David Beckham was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he'd always answer with the same response: I want to be a footballer. This English native got his wish when he joined the Manchester United team in 1991. Since then, he has been crossing, bending, and free-kicking his way to stardom. In his twenty-year career as a professional soccer player, he has won nineteen major trophies, and appeared at three FIFA World Cup tournaments.

David Beckham has become an international cultural icon for his soccer skills, his charity work, and his fashionable wife and family. Young soccer fans are in for a treat with this Who HQ book.

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Women Artists a to Z

Melanie LaBarge

An empowering and educational alphabet picture book about women artists, perfect for fans of Rad American Women A-Z.

How many women artists can you name? From Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe, to Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Xenobia Bailey, this lushly illustrated alphabet picture book presents both famous and underrepresented women in the fine arts from a variety of genres: painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and more. Each spread features a simple line of text encapsulating the creator's iconic work in one word, such as "D is for Dots" (Yayoi Kusama) and "S is for Spider" (Louise Bourgeois), followed by slightly longer text about the artist for older readers who would like to know more. Backmatter includes photos, extended biographies, and discussion questions for budding creatives and trailblazers.

Artists featured: Mirka Mora, Betye Saar, Helen Frankenthaler, Yayoi Kusama, Kay Sage, Georgia O'Keeffe, Agnes Martin, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Elizabeth Catlett, Judith Leyster, Leonora Carrington, Carmen Herrera, Edmonia Lewis, Maya Lin, Hilma af Klint, Maria Martinez, Gee's Bend quilters, Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois, Loïs Mailou Jones, Alice Neel, Helen Zughaib, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Dorothea Lange, Xenobia Bailey, and Maria Sibylla Merian.

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Brave. Black. First.

Cheryl Hudson

Published in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, discover over fifty remarkable African American women whose unique skills and contributions paved the way for the next generation of young people. Perfect for fans of Rad Women Worldwide, Women in Science, and Girls Think of Everything.

Harriet Tubman guided the way.
Rosa Parks sat for equality.
Aretha Franklin sang from the soul.
Serena Williams bested the competition.
Michelle Obama transformed the White House.
Black women everywhere have changed the world!

Published in partnership with curators from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, this illustrated biography compilation captures the iconic moments of fifty African American women whose heroism and bravery rewrote the American story for the better.

They were fearless. They were bold. They were game changers.

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Fred's Big Feelings

Laura Renauld

An inspiring picture book biography about the inimitable Fred Rogers, beloved creator and star of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Fred Rogers was a quiet boy with big feelings. Sometimes, he felt scared or lonely; at other times, he was playful and joyous. But when Fred’s feelings felt too big, his Grandfather McFeely knew exactly what to say to make him feel better: I like you just the way you are.

Fred grew up and created Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, the television program that would go on to warm the hearts and homes of millions of Americans. But one day, the government threatened to cut funding for public television, including Fred’s show. So, Fred stepped off the set and into a hearing on Capitol Hill to make his feelings known.

In a portrait full of warmth and feeling, Laura Renauld and award-winning illustrator Brigette Barrager tell the story of Mister Rogers: a quiet, compassionate hero whose essential message—that it is okay to have and to express feelings—still resonates today.

This book is not associated with or authorized by Fred Rogers Productions.

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David Attenborough

Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara

In this book from the critically acclaimed Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the life of David Attenborough, the inspiring broadcaster and conservationist.

Little David grew up in Leicester on the campus of a university, where his father was a professor. As a child, he spent hours in the science library, collating his own specimens and creating a mini animal museum. When he was old enough to go to university, he studied science and zoology—but what he wanted most of all was to be close to the animals he was studying. So, he started working in television, visiting animals in their natural habitats, and telling the world the untold stories of these animals. This moving book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the broadcaster's life.

Little People, BIG DREAMS is a best-selling series of books and educational games that explore the lives of outstanding people, from designers and artists to scientists and activists. All of them achieved incredible things, yet each began life as a child with a dream.

This empowering series offers inspiring messages to children of all ages, in a range of formats. The board books are told in simple sentences, perfect for reading aloud to babies and toddlers. The hardcover versions present expanded stories for beginning readers. Boxed gift sets allow you to collect a selection of the books by theme. Paper dolls, learning cards, matching games, and other fun learning tools provide even more ways to make the lives of these role models accessible to children.

Inspire the next generation of outstanding people who will change the world with Little People, BIG DREAMS!

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Saving the Countryside

Linda Marshall

"Fans of Beatrix Potter will delight in this tribute to her dedication and talent, encapsulating a legacy that reaches far beyond the pages of her beloved books."-Foreword Reviews in a STARRED REVIEW

"Empowering and fresh."-School Library Journal

"The life of the British picture-book author and illustrator makes a serendipitous subject for an engaging and attractive picture book...A well-told tale that makes the life story of the renowned author accessible to children."-Kirkus Reviews

"Perhaps Peter Rabbit needs no introduction, but even children who know Beatrix Potter's name probably know little about her. This appealing picture book fills that gap.... Recommended for young Beatrix Potter fans."-Booklist

"In forthright language, this picture book biography recounts her boundary-breaking life as she grows from a nature-loving child with a menagerie of pets...into a successful artist and canny entrepreneur. An attractive introduction to an iconic creator."-Publisher's Weekly

"An exceptionally accurate portrait of Beatrix Potter told with humor and surprise. Beautifully done." Linda Lear, author of Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature

Through she's universally known as the creator of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter did so much more. This is the true story about how she helped save the English countryside!

Growing up in London, Beatrix Potter felt the restraints of Victorian times. Girls didn't go to school and weren't expected to work. But she longed to do something important, something that truly mattered. As Beatrix spent her summers in the country and found inspiration in nature, it was through this passion that her creativity flourished.

There, she crafted The Tale of Peter Rabbit. She would eventually move to the countryside full-time, but developers sought to change the land. To save it, Beatrix used the money from the success of her books and bought acres and acres of land and farms to prevent the development of the countryside that both she and Peter Rabbit so cherished. Because of her efforts, it's been preserved just as she left it.

This beautiful picture book shines a light on Beatrix Potter's lesser-known history and her desire to do something for the greater good.

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Ready to Fly: How Sylvia Townsend Became the Bookmobile Ballerina

Lea Lyon

Lyrical, inspiring, and affecting text paired with bright, appealing illustrations make Ready to Fly perfect for aspiring ballerinas everywhere who are ready to leap and to spread their wings!

Ready to Fly is the true story of Sylvia Townsend, an African American girl who falls in love with ballet after seeing Swan Lake on TV. This nonfiction picture book is an excellent choice to share at home or in the classroom.

Although there aren't many ballet schools that will accept a girl like Sylvia in the 1950s, her local bookmobile provides another possibility. A librarian helps Sylvia find a book about ballet and the determined seven-year-old, with the help of her new books, starts teaching herself the basics of classical ballet.

Soon Sylvia learns how to fly--how to dance--and how to dare to dream.

Includes a foreword from Sylvia Townsend, a brief history of the bookmobile, an author's note, and a further reading list.

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Vivienne Westwood

Isabel Sanchez Vegara

New in the Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the life of Vivienne Westwood, the flame-haired fashion designer and impresario.

When Vivienne was a young woman, she wasn't sure how a working class girl from England could make a living in the art world. But after discovering her passion for design and jewelry making, she erupted onto the fashion scene with a bang. Vivienne's designs became iconic, and she became famous for letting her clothes speak for themselves. This moving book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical photos and a detailed profile of the designer's life.

Little People, BIG DREAMS is a best-selling series of books and educational games that explore the lives of outstanding people, from designers and artists to scientists and activists. All of them achieved incredible things, yet each began life as a child with a dream.

This empowering series offers inspiring messages to children of all ages, in a range of formats. The board books are told in simple sentences, perfect for reading aloud to babies and toddlers. The hardcover versions present expanded stories for beginning readers. Boxed gift sets allow you to collect a selection of the books by theme. Paper dolls, learning cards, matching games, and other fun learning tools provide even more ways to make the lives of these role models accessible to children.

Inspire the next generation of outstanding people who will change the world with Little People, BIG DREAMS!

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Ruth Objects

Doreen Rappaport

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a trailblazer. A fighter. A public servant who has dedicated her life to the pursuit of equality.
When Ruth was a young girl, her mother encouraged her to read, be independent, and stand up for what she thought was right. Ruth graduated first in her class at Cornell University and tied for top of her graduating class at Columbia Law School. But she faced prejudice as both a woman and a Jew, making it difficult to get a job. Ruth eventually found work as a law clerk, and her determination, diligence, and skill led to a distinguished career as a lawyer. In 1993, she became the second woman ever appointed to the United States Supreme Court. As a Supreme Court justice, Ruth has inspired fierce admiration and faced fervent opposition for her judgments in high-profile cases, many of which have involved discrimination. She has been lauded for her sharp wit and boldness, even when her opinions differ from that of the majority.
As a student, teacher, lawyer, and judge, Ruth often experienced unfair treatment. But she persisted, becoming a cultural icon, championing equality in pay and opportunity. Her brilliant mind, compelling arguments, and staunch commitment to truth and justice have convinced many to stand with her, and her fight continues to this day.
This installment of the award-winning Big Words series brings a legendary figure into focus with Doreen Rappaport's incisive prose combined with Ruth's own words. Eric Velasquez's dynamic illustrations infuse every scene with life in a moving tribute that will inspire young justice seekers everywhere.

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The Oldest Student

Rita Lorraine Hubbard

Imagine learning to read at the age of 116! Discover the true story of Mary Walker, the nation's oldest student who did just that, in this picture book from a Caldecott Honor-winning illustrator and a rising star author.

In 1848, Mary Walker was born into slavery. At age 15, she was freed, and by age 20, she was married and had her first child. By age 68, she had worked numerous jobs, including cooking, cleaning, babysitting, and selling sandwiches to raise money for her church. At 114, she was the last remaining member of her family. And at 116, she learned to read. From Rita Lorraine Hubbard and rising star Oge More comes the inspirational story of Mary Walker, a woman whose long life spanned from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, and who--with perseverance and dedication--proved that you're never too old to learn.

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The Thursday Murder Club

Richard Osman

"A little beacon of pleasure in the midst of the gloom...SUCH FUN!"
--Kate Atkinson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Sky

Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves
A female cop with her first big case
A brutal murder
Welcome to...
THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB


In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club.

When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case.

As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?

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The Book of Lamps and Banners

Elizabeth Hand

Acclaimed crime writer Elizabeth Hand returns to her "fiercely frightening yet hauntingly beautiful" cult-favorite series: Photographer Cass Neary is hard-up for cash and in more danger than she realizes on the hunt for an ancient, legendary book (Tess Gerritsen). Photographer Cass Neary is desperate to get home, and she's already lost her camera -- like losing a limb. Now her only chance is to cash in on a deal that a friend is about to cut for a legendary illuminated manuscript: The Book of Lamps and Banners. Rumored to have been rescued from the Library at Alexandria, the Book is said to contain ancient esoteric knowledge, even an otherworldly power.

So when an intruder brazenly steals the manuscript, Cass and her ex-con lover Quinn must get it back-plunging headlong into a shady underworld where antiquarian booksellers, unhinged tech entrepreneurs, and brutal nationalists all converge. This breathless psychological thriller, featuring one of the greatest amateur sleuths of the past decade, could only come from the mind of Elizabeth Hand.
"Kaleidoscopic, dark, and mysterious . . . This novel is a jaw-punch, written with a snarling grace." -- Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World

"I love Cass Neary . . . . Her latest misadventure is vivid and haunting, braiding the ancient and occult with the unholy frights of the modern world."Steph Cha, author of Your House Will Pay

"Elizabeth Hand has delivered a startling book that is dirty, wise, aching, and almost magical."Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women

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And Now She's Gone

Rachel Howzell Hall

“Sharp, witty and perfectly paced, And Now She’s Gone is one hell of a read!” —Wendy Walker, bestselling author of The Night Before

Isabel Lincoln is gone.

But is she missing?

It’s up to Grayson Sykes to find her. Although she is reluctant to track down a woman who may not want to be found, Gray’s search for Isabel Lincoln becomes more complicated and dangerous with every new revelation about the woman’s secrets and the truth she’s hidden from her friends and family.

Featuring two complicated women in a dangerous cat and mouse game, Rachel Howzell Hall's And Now She’s Gone explores the nature of secrets — and how violence and fear can lead you to abandon everything in order to survive.

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He Started It

Samantha Downing

AN INSTANT INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

“Wholly original. Scarily clever. Completely mesmerizing. You will never look at family road trips the same way again.”—Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author

A most anticipated book by Hello Sunshine ∙ Cosmo Entertainment Weekly Betches Hollywood Reporter ∙ Parade  PopSugar OK! Magazine ∙  Hello Giggles ∙ Bustle ∙  Yahoo! ∙ She Reads ∙ Book Page ∙ CrimeReads ∙ New York Post Best Book of the Week ∙ Goodreads  

From the twisted mind behind mega hit My Lovely Wife comes the story of a family—not unlike your own—just with a few more violent tendencies thrown in....


Beth, Portia, and Eddie Morgan haven't all been together in years. And for very good reasons—we'll get to those later. But when their wealthy grandfather dies and leaves a cryptic final message in his wake, the siblings and their respective partners must come together for a cross-country road trip to fulfill his final wish and—more importantly—secure their inheritance.

But time with your family can be tough. It is for everyone.

It's even harder when you're all keeping secrets and trying to forget a memory, a missing person, an act of revenge, the man in the black truck who won't stop following your car—and especially when at least one of you is a killer and there's a body in the trunk. Just to name a few reasons.

But money is a powerful motivator. It is for everyone.

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The End of the Day

Bill Clegg

“Reading [The End of the Day] is like studying a stained-glass window up close, each piece bright and sharply cut, but when you step back and see it as a whole you discover a large, beautiful, mysterious work of art.” —David Ebershoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife

Following his acclaimed New York Times bestseller, Did You Ever Have a Family, Bill Clegg returns with a deeply moving, emotionally resonant second novel about the complicated bonds and breaking points of friendship, the corrosive forces of secrets, the heartbeat of longing, and the redemption found in forgiveness.

A retired widow in rural Connecticut wakes to an unexpected visit from her childhood best friend whom she hasn’t seen in forty-nine years.

A man arrives at a Pennsylvania hotel to introduce his estranged father to his newborn daughter and finds him collapsed on the floor of the lobby.

A sixty-seven-year-old taxi driver in Kauai receives a phone call from the mainland that jars her back to a traumatic past.

These seemingly disconnected lives come together as half-century-old secrets begin to surface. It is in this moment that Bill Clegg reminds us how choices—to connect, to betray, to protect—become our legacy.

Deeply observed and beautifully written, this novel is a feat of storytelling, capturing sixty years within the framework of one fateful day.

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Winging It: Stop Thinking, Start Doing

Emma Isaacs

A call for women everywhere to forget perfectionism and start winging it.
 
Emma Isaacs forgot to draw up her life plan. She doesn’t have a list of five-year goals, and she doesn’t believe in work-life balance. Yet somehow she’s managed to found a multimillion-dollar global organization, become a highly sought-after speaker and media commentator, and be recognized as a prominent voice in women’s leadership—all while raising six young children.

So how does she do it all? She dives in headfirst and wings it.

Women are notorious over-preparers and underestimators when it comes to their own readiness to try something new. But as Emma teaches, what most often holds us back are our own fears, excuses, and doubts. With her revolutionary manifesto, Winging It, Emma has written a rallying cry for all women to “do the things that scare you, build your wealth, make an impact, fail lots, and get up and try again.”

Through hilarious stories, targeted prompts, and timeless advice, Emma will inspire you to get clear on what really matters and go after your dreams, one messy step at a time. Get ready to stop hiding behind the safe option or the perfect plan—and start winging it

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Better, Not Perfect

Max H. Bazerman

Negotiation and decision-making expert Max Bazerman explores how we can make more ethical choices by aspiring to be better, not perfect.

Every day, you make hundreds of decisions. They’re largely personal, but these choices have an ethical twinge as well; they value certain principles and ends over others. Bazerman argues that we can better balance both dimensions—and we needn’t seek perfection to make a real difference for ourselves and the world.

Better, Not Perfect provides a deeply researched, prescriptive roadmap for how to maximize our pleasure and minimize pain. Bazerman shares a framework to be smarter and more efficient, honest and aware—to attain your “maximum sustainable goodness.” In Part Two, he identifies four training grounds to practice these newfound skills for outsized impact: how you think about equality and your tribe(s); waste—from garbage to corporate excess; the way you spend time; and your approach to giving—whether your attention or your money. Ready to nudge yourself toward better, Part Three trains your eye on how to extend what you’ve learned and positively influence others.

Melding philosophy and psychology as never before, this down-to-earth guide will help clarify your goals, assist you in doing more good with your limited time on the planet, and see greater satisfaction in the process.

 

 

 

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Craigslist Confessional

Helena Dea Bala

“Touching.” —The New York Times

For fans of Humans of New York and PostSecret, a collection of raw, urgent, and heartfelt stories, shared anonymously.

Helena Dea Bala was an exhausted and isolated DC lobbyist, suffocating under the weight of her student loan debt, when she decided to split her lunch with a man who often panhandled near her office. They chatted effortlessly as they ate; there were no half-truths or white lies, and no fear of judgment. Helena felt connected and unburdened in a way she hadn’t in years.

Inspired, she posted an ad on Craigslist promising to listen, anonymously and for free, to whatever the speaker felt he or she couldn’t tell anyone else. Emails from people desperate to connect flooded her inbox, and she listened. Within months, Helena quit her job, deferred her loans, and dove into listening full time.

The forty first-person confessions in this book are vivid, intimate, and real; they range from devastating traumas, to lost loves, to reflections on hard choices. Some accounts are quotidian, like that of one increasingly estranged husband: “I want to feel that we’re not just roommates—that we’re not just waiting for the kids to grow up so that we can move on.” Others are deeply disconcerting, like that of a sex addict employed by a religious organization and several are heartening, like that of a mother who dares to hope that her daughter, born with life-threatening heart defects, will one day walk down the aisle: “Sometimes you need to have the audacity to believe that it will all be okay, that it is okay to have the same kinds of dreams as everyone else.”

In its complex portrayal of the common human experience, Craigslist Confessional challenges us to explore the depths of our vulnerability and expand the borders of our empathy.

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Conditional Citizens

Laila Lalami

The acclaimed, award-winning novelist--author of The Moor's Account and The Other Americans--now gives us a bracingly personal work of nonfiction that is concerned with the experiences of "conditional citizens."

What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize Finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration of the rights, liberties, and protections that are traditionally associated with American citizenship. Tapping into history, politics, and literature, she elucidates how accidents of birth--such as national origin, race, or gender--that once determined the boundaries of Americanness still cast their shadows today. Throughout the book, she poignantly illustrates how white supremacy survives through adaptation and legislation, with the result that a caste system is maintained, keeping the modern equivalent of white male landowners at the top of the social hierarchy. Conditional citizens, she argues, are all the people whom America embraces with one arm, and pushes away with the other.

Brilliantly argued and deeply personal, Conditional Citizens weaves together the author's own experiences with explorations of the place of nonwhites in the broader American culture.

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This Is All I Got

Lauren Sandler

 

From an award-winning journalist, a poignant and gripping immersion in the life of a young, homeless single mother amid her quest to find stability and shelter in the richest city in America
"Lauren Sandler has brilliantly written the story of America in the age of inequality. Read this book, please--it is as gripping as it is moving as it is important."--Darren Walker, president, The Ford Foundation

Camila is twenty-two years old and a new mother. She has no family to rely on, no partner, and no home. Despite her intelligence and determination, the odds are firmly stacked against her. In this extraordinary work of literary reportage, Lauren Sandler chronicles a year in Camila's life--from the birth of her son to his first birthday--as she navigates the labyrinth of poverty and homelessness in New York City. In her attempts to secure a safe place to raise her son and find a measure of freedom in her life, Camila copes with dashed dreams, failed relationships, the desolation of abandonment, and miles of red tape with grit, humor, and uncanny resilience.

Every day, more than forty-five million Americans attempt to survive below the poverty line. Every night, nearly sixty thousand people sleep in New York City-run shelters, 40 percent of them children. In This Is All I Got, Sandler brings this deeply personal issue to life, vividly depicting one woman's hope and despair and her steadfast determination to change her life despite the myriad setbacks she encounters.

This Is All I Got is a rare feat of reporting and a dramatic story of survival. Sandler's candid and revealing account also exposes the murky boundaries between a journalist and her subject when it becomes impossible to remain a dispassionate observer. She has written a powerful and unforgettable indictment of a system that is often indifferent to the needs of those it serves, and that sometimes seems designed to fail.

 

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Good Time Party Girl

Helen Cromwell

""I'll roast the goose that pisses on your grave!" Dirty Helen Cromwell takes you through her life and adventures-from her small-town dreams to how she earned her name. This long-lost autobiography of a woman who lived life with no regrets from the 1880s to the 1960s offers a rare look into the colorful criminal underworld from New York to San Francisco and every whorehouse, tavern, and mining camp in between. Demure, sweet, yet wild teenage Helen flees from Indiana to Cincinnati with her first of six husbands. She soon realizes that the traditional role of wife and mother isn't for her. She meets cunning millionaires, bank robbers, detectives, and gangsters as she hustles her way through life. Her friends were everyone else's enemies-Al Capone, Big Jim Colosimo and Johnny Torrio all spend time with Helen as she bounces from adventure to adventure. It's the true-life story of a woman who never said "No" and carved out an independent life that transgressed every societal boundary. Her life is a rarely seen look into the reality of a woman who chose sex-work as a path to the good life. This is the story of a mother, a sex-worker and entrepreneur who lived by her own rules. Helen Worley Cromwell born in Cicero, Indiana in 1886 was known far and wide as "Dirty Helen" because of her poetic and prolific cursing. In the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, her Milwaukee bar was a rendezvous for the famous and the infamous. Assisted by Robert Dougherty, 'Dirty Helen' was first published in 1966. The updated Feral House edition contains private family photos and images from a raucous night at the Sun Flower Inn. Afterword about Helen's end of life and legacy by Christina Ward."--Publisher's website.

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Brag Better

Meredith Fineman

This effortless and unapologetic approach to self-promotion will manage your anxiety and allow you to champion yourself.

Does talking about your accomplishments feel scary or icky because you're worried people will think you're "obnoxious"?

Does it feel more natural to "put your head down and do the work"?

Are you tired of watching the loudest people in your industry get disproportionate praise and rewards?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above, you might be self-sabotaging. You need to learn to Brag Better. Meredith Fineman has built a career working with "The Qualified Quiet": smart people who struggle to talk about themselves and thus go underestimated or unrecognized. Now, she shares the surefire and anxiety-proof strategies that have helped her clients effectively communicate their achievements and skillsets to others.

Bragging Better doesn't require false bravado, talking over people, or pretending to be more qualified than you are. Instead, Fineman advocates finding quiet confidence in your opinions, abilities, and background, and then turning up the volume. In this book, you will learn the career-changing tools she's developed over the past decade that make bragging feel easy, including:

- Get remembered by focusing your personal brand and voice on key adjectives (like "effective, subtle, and edgy")
- Practice explaining what you do in simple, sticky terms to earn respect and recognition from the public and people at work.
- Eliminate words that undermine your work and find better ones--like your bio saying you're "trying" or "attempting" to do something instead that you ARE doing it.

If you're ready to begin Bragging Better--to telling the truth about your accomplishments with grace and confidence--this book is for you.

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